PseudoPod 460: Great Oak

[Bdoomed]

PseudoPod 460: Great Oak

by Jason Rush

“Great Oak” is a PseudoPod original.

Jason Rush lives in Colorado with his wife, Shannon, and dog, Freckles. When he’s not writing, he snowboards, skateboards, hikes, climbs mountains and plays guitar. He is currently working on his first novel, Mad Maddie, which took first place in the Zebulon contest at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference. He blogs at jasonrush.com and tweets at @diminish7 .

Your narrator – Cheyenne Wright is a freelance illustrator and concept artist. He is the color artist on the three-time Hugo Award winning steampunk graphic novel series Girl Genius, and co-creator of many other fine works; Including 50 Fathoms and the Ennie award winning Deadlands Noir for the Savage Worlds RPG. He has also produced graphics for Star Trek Online, the Champions MMO, and t-shirt designs for T.V.’s Alton Brown. Cheyenne lives in Seattle with his wife, their daughter, and an ever growing stack of unpainted miniatures. In his spare time he is teaching himself animation, and narrates short stories for a variety of audio anthologies where he is known as Podcasting’s Mr. Buttery ManVoice ™

Purchase your copy of Queers Destroy Horror! here: http://www.nightmare-magazine.com/ebooks/october-2015-issue-37-queers-destroy-horror/

Buy a copy of Hexed by Anders Manga here: https://andersmanga.bandcamp.com/


Rob swings the door of the old Ford pickup, and it squeaks before clunking shut. He puts a hand on the truck to steady himself. His tongue feels like someone crammed a wad of cotton in his mouth, soaked in whiskey and blood.

He flicks a glance at the back of the truck, then across the field to where the great oak stands on the hill, black against the midnight sky.

_I know,_ Rob thinks, looking away from the tree. _I know what I gotta do. Jus’ gimme a goddamn minute._


Be sure to check out our Fourth Annual Flash Fiction Contest!


Listen to this week's Pseudopod.

[Chicken Ghost]

I was trying to think about the economic situation from Johnny's point of view.  The big farms are what's bringing the jobs, he says.  Well, sure, if he doesn't have a farm, that's probably true.  The small family farms are probably employing more people per acre than the big farms, but they're employing family first.  If family isn't Johnny, jobs are going to be fewer for him. 

Say there are 2000 people working on the family farms in the area, 1800 of them family, and there are 2200 people available to work on the farms.  The unemployment rate for all farm workers is about 9 percent, but for farm workers with no family farm (like Johnny, I presume) it is 50 percent.

Say all those family farms are bought out by Big Farm Inc.  They only have 1500 positions total.  There are still 2200 farm workers available, and the unemployment rate for farm workers is 32 percent.  For Rob that's a tragedy; for Johnny, that's a gigantic improvement. 

So yeah, sure.  Damned hicks. 

[Maxilu]

A few days ago, I wrote "if you take care of the land, the land will take care of you" over on Escape Pod. This wasn't what I meant.

The tree is intriguing. I'm guessing from the dress of the characters and the location of the author, that this story takes place in North America. I imagined Rob's ancestors making sacrifices to oak trees all the way back to Celtic times. I even imagined an ancestor carefully bringing an acorn or seedling across the ocean and plains until he found his farmstead. There's an ancientness to sacrificing to an oak tree that doesn't really fit comfortably in the Anglo-Saxon in North America narrative. This story is creepier for it.

[Unblinking]

Especially with the tree in the title, I felt this one telegraphed its punch pretty early, but I felt it was still decently powerful despite it.

[SpringerBot]

I feel like its early telegraphing was actually a strength. The oak's presence in the distance gave it a looming power that made the ending more believable than it would have otherwise been. By the end, Rob's desperation and faith in the oak build up the tree's power to a mythic level. Then when it goes all Audrey 2 on Johnny, it feels like a suitably ancient and unconquerable evil.

[adrianh]

I feel like its early telegraphing was actually a strength. The oak's presence in the distance gave it a looming power that made the ending more believable than it would have otherwise been. By the end, Rob's desperation and faith in the oak build up the tree's power to a mythic level. Then when it goes all Audrey 2 on Johnny, it feels like a suitably ancient and unconquerable evil.

Yup. I thought it worked nicely. This was a masterful example of putting just enough information in just the right place to pull me through the story.

In particular the telling of the tale out of sequence was done very well. All to often flashbacks are used as really blunt tools to artificially create tension (I have a deep hatred of the "24 hours earlier" trope that tv folk so often use).

Here that initial framing as the narrator coming back drunk, possibly from a bar fight, helped give me a feeling for him being at a low point — just about to break. Then the flashback shows us that he's already pushed past that point of no return.

Nicely done.

[Unblinking]

In particular the telling of the tale out of sequence was done very well. All to often flashbacks are used as really blunt tools to artificially create tension (I have a deep hatred of the "24 hours earlier" trope that tv folk so often use).

I agree.

Have you seen "The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret" on IFC?  It stars David Cross, and starts off with the title character sitting on trial in a British court with a list of egregious and bizarre charges listed against him, while the court is in an uproar around him and he just looks dazed from the full list.  And then flashes back to Todd Margaret in a deskjob in the US, who is mistaken as a go-getter by his boss, and sent to run the London sales team for the energy drink Thunder Muscle.  Feeling pressured to lie to support this move, he claims to have been raised in England, despite having not even the slightest familiarity with the culture, and so ends up choosing to tell ridiculously escalating lies in order to try to cover his own ass.  The first two seasons lead up to that initial glimpse of the trial as you find out how he got all those charges against him.  It was an unusually well-done use of the format. 

(Also, I hear season three is coming out in January)

[eytanz]

I thought this was a pretty good story, though I agree with Unblinking that naming the story after the tree sort of pulled my attention to it a bit before I should have. I was expecting this story to end badly for Rob, because I thought there was a parallelism between Johnny telling Rob he was sorry and being told it was too late to be sorry, and Rob then telling the tree he was sorry. I guess that the tree was a bit more forgiving.

[Scuba Man]

...Then when it goes all Audrey 2 on Johnny, it feels like a suitably ancient and unconquerable evil.

Ah, a Little Shop Of Horrors reference, with Rick Moranis (sp?).  Nicely done.  .  Of course, now I have the finale song pounding in my head...